Couples Who Kill (14 page)

Ng had allegedly admitted to fellow prisoner Laberge that he had murdered Scott Stapley by smashing a handgun
through his teeth and firing. Needless to say, it’s a charge that the convicted murderer now denies.

This author had assumed that Leonard Lake alone murdered Paul Cosner, as Mr Cosner had told his girlfriend that he was going to meet a ‘funny looking man’ and if he’d been going to meet Ng he’d surely have said ‘an Asian man.’ But Paul Woods found evidence to suggest that more than one killer was involved. ‘There were
bullet-holes
found in the front passenger seat of his car suggesting he was shot from behind while someone else drove. Charlie couldn’t drive – literally every attempt he every made to learn ended in a minor crash. It suggests there were probably two other people in the car when Cosner was murdered.’ He adds that, in this case there’s no conclusive forensic evidence as his body has never been found.

So, if Paul hadn’t known of the mutilated male bodies that
were
found on Lake’s property and if he hadn’t seen part of the M Ladies tape, would he have believed that Charles Ng, the soft-spoken man sitting across from him in the prison visitor’s enclosure, was capable of so many torture-killings?

‘I can only answer in the words of one of my old drinking buddies, the great noir novelist Derek Raymond: “One does not describe evil by giving it six fingers.” In other words, assess people by their actions rather than their outward demeanour or whatever opinion they have of themselves.’

But he’s aware that others are understandably more swayed by appearances. ‘One of the jurors in the Ng trial was torn by mixed emotions. She was traumatised by the M Ladies tape, and Brenda O’Connor’s pleading for her
baby, but found it difficult to reconcile the chubby, docile Charles Ng in the courtroom with the vicious young man on the video monitor. But of course, Ng dispelled any residual sympathy she might feel when he violated her sense of security by telephoning her at home, shortly before the jury returned their recommendation of death.’

Paul adds: ‘I think Ng, who seems to have a short fuse since his abused childhood, certainly had a proclivity toward crime, although he would never have made a successful criminal. He was also violent, and it’s quite possible he committed murders of his own accord that were acts of male-on-male aggression. But in terms of the wholesale mass murder and sex murder that Lake initiated, I think Charlie was an associate. Dr Callahan called him
the sorcerer’s apprentice
.’

He continues: ‘Ng lacked the cruelty to pets which so many embryonic serial killers display, and Leonard Lake mocked him for being unable to discipline the household’s new puppy. Ng was actually sentimental toward animals, in a manner that I’ve often found with men who are violent but not necessarily sadistic.’ He believes that Leonard Lake gave Charles Ng the freedom to become more cruel and that Ng’s actions ‘echo the pessimistic findings of Harvard University psychological researcher Stanley Milgram and his 37% of those experimental participants in the late 1960s who refused, when confronted with disturbing faked evidence, to participate further in inflicting pain on human subjects. The majority (63%) continued to inflict staged but seemingly authentic electrical shocks.’ He adds ‘Whereas I don’t feel Charlie Ng was predisposed toward sex murder, I believe he allowed himself to learn to like it under Leonard’s tuition.’

Ng has used the excuse that ‘I just have that personality that facilitates …allowing him to dominate me in certain areas.’ In reality, individuals who are dominated by one person often go on to dominate others. For example, Rose West was terrorised by her violent father – but she, in turn, went on to sexually abuse and beat her children. We can see this pattern in many violent families where the father beats the mother, the mother beats the children, the oldest children beat their younger siblings and the youngest child beats the family dog.

As Ng alleged he had no interest in the sex slaves, the former marine found it hard to explain why he’d waited in the cabin for more than six hours while Lake drove to San Jose to kidnap Kathy Allen. ‘He told me to stay and wait,’ he said weakly, ‘So I did.’ He added ‘My relationship with Mr Lake is essentially one of respect and loyalty and looking after him.’ He adds that he ‘worried about him.’

Paul isn’t convinced that Leonard reciprocated Charles’s feelings. ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt that Ng was regarded as a mere lackey by the man he believed to be his closest friend.’

The researcher thinks this is a classic case of
folie à deux
‘with both parties – particularly the shy socially-backwards Charlie Ng, whose formative environments had been all male – capable of more extreme criminal acts than if they acted alone.’ He’s aware that ‘in Lake’s case this was more a question of logistics than psychology.’

Despite the changing dynamics of their relationship, there’s no doubt that Charles Ng became violent in his own right and remained so after Lake’s death – after all, he shot the security guard who tried to prevent him leaving the Calgary supermarket with stolen goods. Paul notes
that Ng skirted around this issue. ‘If memory is correct, he may have tried to sell Dr Callahan the line that his pulling the gun was actually a form of attempted suicide.’ The researcher found that ‘Charlie could be very aggressive in the way he asserted that he was a passive compliant person.’ In Ng’s own words ‘I become an easy scapegoat because I’m an associate of Leonard and because I’m an Asian, I just think they throw in all these stereotypes, you know – a general kamikaze type.’

He manages to ignore the fact that his kamikaze reputation began after he crashed his car, fled from a military prison hospital, terrorised kidnapped women on tape and drew incredibly sadistic cartoons.

But were the bondage cartoons which Ng drew in prison representative of the horrors carried out at Wilseyville? Paul’s not convinced. ‘Ng insisted to me that his cartoons were obvious satire and I basically concur. Which is not to say that I don’t think he’s a sexual sadist – that, by gradual degree in his case, and by personal inclination in Leonard’s case, was a large part of what the Lake-Ng partnership was all about.’

He adds ‘There’s no doubt that these drawings have a strong sadistic element, in emotional as much as in sexual terms. But I think it’s also true that, as Ng says, he was drawing them as a crude satire of the charges against him. What we can also observe, and what Ng would dispute perhaps until his dying day, is that they also exhibit a form of gloating over the victims and their bereaved families.’

‘When Ng took the stand in his trial, his dismissive reference to the more savage examples of his cartoon art inadvertently allowed the prosecution to show further pieces to the jury. While Ng claimed they had “no basis in
reality”, and that he was “goaded” into drawing them for another prisoner, the darkly satirical images of Lake and Ng frying babies in a wok, microwaving them in an oven or smashing them against a wall inside a pillowcase contradicted his statement that the two prisoners never discussed the accusations of child murder against Ng.’

Paul thinks it likely that the babies were murdered – but not tortured, to gain their parents compliance – as soon as their mothers were seized by Lake and Ng. ‘To reinforce this, there are also the partial confessions that Charlie made to the FBI when he was collared in Canada in 1985. These are relatively little known as they were ruled inadmissible at trial due to the fact that Ng started spieling before his legal aid attorney turned up and told him to button it. When questioned about the babies, he said that Leonard murdered them by holding them between his legs and breaking their necks with the flat palm of his hand. It’s a hideous image, but it has the ring of truth. Ng claimed to play no active role in the child murders, but his admission to being present makes him at very least complicit in the murders of the Dubs and Bond families.’

And the cartoons hinted at further child deaths. ‘Perhaps most ominously, one of the cartoons suppressed in court features Ng being decorated by the French Foreign Legion for “snuffing out” American babies, with four small coffins in the background. Ng was convicted of the murders of two children. He’s never been linked with any other child murders, which is presumably why the defence argued against admission of this particular drawing. However, at Blue Mountain Road, the human remains included a liver identified as that of a three-year-old child. (Sean Dubs and Lonnie Bond Jr were both around a year
old.) There was also a little girl’s embroidered satchel buried in the dirt with other incriminating possessions.’

Perhaps remembering the full horror of his acts is what made Charles Ng’s body break out all over in psoriasis sores after he was jailed – but it’s more likely to be a result of stress from being kept caged and shackled in a moveable restraint.

So what are Paul’s final thoughts about Charles Ng? ‘Though I don’t think he’ll ever confess the full extent of what he personally did or didn’t do, we know that Charlie must have committed some of the worst acts that a human being can. As a consequence, he’s in the worst trouble that a human being can be in.’

He’s aware that Ng still sees himself as a victim rather than a predator, for Ng has said ‘You feel like a battered wife in a burning house because you’re totally powerless to do anything.’ He has also likened himself to a terminal cancer patient, desperate to try any potential cure – or, in Ng’s case, make yet another legal appeal.

‘There’s no doubt that Charlie exercised moral choice in allowing himself to be dominated by a psychopath. Leonard took him where he wanted to go.’ He notes that ‘under California’s definition of
common cause and plan
, Ng is an equal partner to Lake.’

Charles Ng was recently diagnosed as having hepatitis C, so it’s a moot point as to whether the disease or his execution date will get him first.

Children who kill invariably have appalling childhoods, often being physically and emotionally abused by their parents or primary caregivers. The following case is typical in that relatives, social services and friends knew that Marlene was going through hell and that she increasingly wanted to strike back. Failed by the adults in her life, she finally found a lethal weapon in the form of her lovestruck teenage boyfriend, who was willing to die – or kill – for her…

Marlene was born on 15th January 1959 to Jeanette Ellen Etheridge, a nineteen-year-old socialite from an upmarket American family. Jeanette lived with her parents in Norfolk, Virginia and became pregnant by a Scandinavian sailor whilst he was on shore leave. The family worked hard to keep the pregnancy secret and when Marlene was one day old she was adopted by Naomi and Jim Olive.

Baby Marlene spent her first few months in Virginia. She saw little of her well-meaning overworked father but was overwhelmed by the attentions of her mentally ill mother. Naomi was so terrified of Marlene becoming ill that she wore a mask every time she approached the infant and hardly every took her out. Even when a neighbour invited them to dinner, Naomi took her baby daughter into a bedroom and kept her away from the other guests.

It was a theme which continued as Marlene grew up. Naomi would lock herself in the house, keeping her
adopted daughter with her. As a result, Marlene missed out on all of the neighbourhood children’s parties. At other times Naomi passed out from too much drink or prescription drugs, leaving Marlene alone with her thoughts for hour after hour. The only companionship in her day was when her exhausted father came home from work. Jim doted on Marlene, and the feeling was mutual. He brought her back gifts from every one of his work-based trips.

But Jim Olive’s work was a bone of contention, as he lost job after job through working in unstable fields such as advertising, oil, and sales. He even attempted to become a novelist. Some of these jobs took him all around the country – from Miami to New Mexico – whilst Naomi stayed home with Marlene and became increasingly neurotic and insecure.

In 1964, when the Olives were living in Ecuador, Naomi was diagnosed as being schizophrenic and paranoid. Jim’s response was to ignore the situation, simply telling
five-year
-old Marlene to be nicer to her mother. The child did what she could to cope with the unstable adult, but the strain took its toll and Marlene frequently wet the bed. Neighbours noted that Naomi didn’t know how to show her love for her adopted daughter and treated her like a cross between a paid companion and a pet. By eight the little girl had become asthmatic and would often have difficulty breathing after Naomi berated her for coming home from school late or bringing home a friend.

Marlene turned more and more to the family’s two maids for affection (domestic labour was inexpensive in Ecuador so most families were able to afford them) though she was assured of her father’s love and attention when he
finally got home from another long day at work.

Meanwhile Jim Olive put a brave face on things, writing upbeat letters to friends and relatives around the country and attending the 8am mass every Sunday at his Episcopal church. Occasionally he took Marlene with him but he was never accompanied by his wife who rarely left the house. She had now begun to drink whisky in large quantities and kept obsessively buying – and counting – towels, convinced that the maids were stealing them.

At ten Marlene discovered that she was adopted and wondered aloud if that was why Naomi didn’t love her. At eleven she admitted in class that she hated her mother – but the response was merely a shocked silence. That year she took part in a confirmation ceremony to please her parents but there was nothing heavenly about her life.

Naomi hated her daughter having any freedom, and once, when she did go to a friend’s house, she sent the Ecuadorian militia to bring her home. On other occasions she’d start telephoning friends in a panic when the
eleven-year
-old was three minutes late.

Marlene’s relationship with her adoring father was also increasingly unhealthy. He and Naomi had separate rooms, and Marlene would sneak into her dad’s bed at night for a cuddle. He began to take her to work-related social events (he was a brilliant networker) where he introduced her jokingly as ‘his other girlfriend.’ A colleague referred to Marlene as ‘his little mistress’ and Marlene herself echoed this idea in her poetry, writing ‘Long brown hair could entice any man/And her green eyes could light the night/Daddy couldn’t have chosen any better.’ There was nothing incestuous about Jim’s love for his child, but by making her roleplay the part of his spouse he stole her
childhood and contributed to her feelings of being overwhelmed by life.

On the upside, Marlene was sent to a private school in Ecuador and she had designer clothes and a beautiful home. She also had two cats and a dog to lavish love on. Denied normal friendships, at thirteen she played for hours with her dolls. She also wore her father’s clothes when he was away on business trips, her confused way of remaining close to him.

Jim Olive was still convinced that he’d make a million, telling his friends that selling could lead to untold riches, or as he put it ‘pie in the sky!’ But his latest business venture failed, leaving the Olives close to bankruptcy. They said goodbye to their lovely house and servants and returned to the States.

Now the teenage Marlene was enrolled at a state school in Terra Linda, California, where she looked totally out of place in her designer dresses and lacy cardigans. She was too shy to make eye-contact with the other teenagers, was bullied mercilessly, and simply didn’t fit in. She was homesick for Ecuador and also desperate to escape her unstable mother, who had now begun to stockpile food. Marlene started to overeat and was teased for being plump – but with her green eyes and long brown hair she was still beautiful. She was also a gifted poetess, writing heartfelt lines such as: A broken sound/Cries out in pain/People hear/But they don’t listen.’ Her teachers saw that she was academically gifted but alternately angry and sad.

But to Naomi the teenager was a no good whore, and she told her so virtually every day. She shoved Marlene into
a window, cutting her arm. On another occasion she threw a hot iron at the girl, scalding her wrist. During one argument, where Naomi insisted that Marlene was cutting celery ‘the wrong way’, Marlene retaliated, throwing the vegetable knife at her mother. Naomi’s response was to tell Marlene that her natural mother had been a promiscuous girl who had given her away.

The emotional stress continued to take its physical toll and fourteen-year-old Marlene had stomach aches by day and was insomniacal by night. She developed a duodenal ulcer for which her GP prescribed sleeping pills and tranquillisers. For the first time, Marlene had a crutch to get her through the day, albeit one which ignored the reasons for her symptoms. She began to take the mood pills in increasingly dangerous quantities.

She turned to Buddhism in a desperate bid to escape reality, and when that didn’t help, she experimented with the occult. Like many children from abusive homes she hoped to find a gateway to a better life than the one she currently endured.

But there was no escape and her hellish home life continued. Social workers recognised that Naomi was an alcoholic and that Jim’s solution was to ignore Marlene’s misery. They strongly advocated family therapy – but Naomi’s own mother had spent most of her adult life in a mental hospital, leaving Naomi terrified of psychiatry. She started to have arguments with herself, taking the parts of four or five relatives. She would argue loudly like this every night, keeping Marlene from sleep.

Marlene now asked to be fostered out, and social services found her an older couple who wanted a babysitter for their grandchildren. The first week went well, but by the second week Marlene sometimes didn’t show up for her babysitting duties. On the third week she stayed out all night at a rock concert, and the foster parents returned her to the Olives. Marlene was in floods of tears.

An astute family worker noted ‘Marlene is angry at her parents – legitimately so. She has a disturbed mother and an ineffective father.’ Marlene’s probation officer also recognised the family’s problems, writing a pre-vacation report which warned ‘This one could blow up while I’m gone.’

Marlene ran away on her sixteenth birthday and stayed with friends for several days. She spent most of this time in bed with stress-related stomach pains and cried constantly. Eventually the police brought her back. By now her father was so involved in his latest business venture that he didn’t have the energy to mediate between mother and daughter so he took Naomi’s side to keep the peace.

Marlene was devastated, then angry. For years he’d been her only ally, an island of sanity in a home wrecked by schizophrenia and alcoholism. Now he’d chosen a mad woman over her and Marlene wanted revenge.

Her resources stretched to breaking point, the
sixteen-year
-old began to tell her friends that she longed to kill her parents, especially her mother. She half-heartedly put her prescription drugs in Naomi’s lunch but Naomi noted that the food tasted bitter and refused it. Marlene then
fantasized out loud about hitting her with a rolling pin. When she acquired a boyfriend, Chuck Riley, she told him she wanted to kill her mother but he hoped that it was just angry talk.

Charles David Riley (known as Chuck) was born on 2nd May 1955 in Marin County, California, to Joanne and Oscar Riley. He came along within a year of their marriage and was their first son. Two years later the couple had another son and four years after that a daughter completed their brood.

Oscar had a business qualification and had originally taken blue collar work as an interim measure, but when he and Joanne started a family she had to give up work so Oscar retained his supermarket job. He worked hard to provide for his family and hoped that they’d grow up to have better employment opportunities than himself.

Chuck was initially a happy child who enjoyed going to the zoo with his siblings, going fishing with his dad or playing with his trucks in the backyard. He was an animal lover who kept an increasingly large number of rabbits and several types of pet bird.

When he started school, his mother went back to work as a nurse’s aide and this helped the family finances. When Chuck was eight they moved to a bigger house in Arkansas, but the family weren’t happy there and by the time Chuck was nine they’d moved back to California.

Unfortunately Oscar found it difficult to show his oldest son love -author Richard M Levine, who got to like the family, admitted that Oscar was ‘rigid and authoritarian’ – so Chuck became increasingly withdrawn.
Oscar would point out San Quentin prison to his children when they annoyed him and warn that they’d end up there if they didn’t mend their ways.

Ironically, Chuck would indeed end up there, just as Marlene would end up becoming a whore, the label her adoptive mother gave to her. It’s a pattern that crime authors see again and again. A dysfunctional parent constantly tells a child that he or she is potentially criminal, and the child grows up to believe he or she is bad and commits bad acts. Robert Thompson (who killed alongside Jon Venables and is profiled in
Children Who Kill
) was often shown a juvenile hall by his abusive father and told he’d end up in a similar establishment. At age ten he did.

Oscar continued, in a well-meaning but disastrous way, to discipline his children and Joanne tried to lighten the atmosphere by giving the children extra food.

By the age of four Chuck was piling on the pounds and by ten he was so overweight that his mother asked for medical help. But the doctor discovered that there was no biochemical reason for the boy’s obesity – he was simply eating too much. He was given a diet sheet but found it difficult to adhere to, especially when Oscar (now driving a truck for a bakery outlet) brought home lots of cut-price baked goods.

Chuck also began to fail academically and his parents decided he should repeat third grade. He lost his friends and felt humiliated. A follower rather than a leader, he didn’t know what to do with his days.

As he entered his teens his life improved when he became a paperboy. Unfailingly polite and dutiful, he won the regional paperboy of the year award several times. His
prizes included statuettes, a trip to Disneyland and his photo in the local paper. He saved up his money from this part-time job, knowing that he’d eventually be able to buy an inexpensive car. Meanwhile Chuck plastered his bedroom walls with pictures of Corvettes, a symbol of freedom. In real life he was mocked at school for his obesity – but in his dreams he sped through the local streets in a sports car, winning everyone’s respect.

By fifteen Chuck weighed over three hundred pounds and was described by Richard M Levine as ‘an affection starved fat boy.’ His doctor prescribed Dexedrine for weight loss but Chuck quickly began using it to give him more energy, a much-needed high. He began to experiment with other drugs, taking pot and coke and angel dust. He found that if he sold some of this on at a profit he could fund his own supply.

Desperate to make friends, Chuck sometimes gave his drugs away at cost or even for nothing. This gained him male associates but he remained a virgin, unable to get a girlfriend.

Still failing at school, the obese teenager increasingly played truant. He spent his days on a piece of scrubland, dirt-bike riding and target shooting. Guns made him feel powerful, in control. He also used drugs whilst out on the scrubland, snorting, smoking and mainlining them.

When Chuck quit school he made a living through selling marijuana and coke. Though still a shy, gentle boy he tried to adopt the persona of a tough drug dealer, boasting to friends that he supplied the country’s top rock groups with whichever drugs they wanted, and at sixteen he fulfilled one of his dreams by buying an inexpensive second-hand car.